


Counting Stars

by allofthefandoms



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 09:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2019840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allofthefandoms/pseuds/allofthefandoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look!” Steve says suddenly, pointing up to the sky.  Bucky doesn’t see anything at first, but then he sees the flash of a shooting star.</p>
<p>“Make a wish.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Got a drabble prompt and things got out of hand.

Bucky is not going to let Steve die in the hospital.

It was pneumonia again, rattling and shaking Steve’s tiny frame.  But the fever hasn’t broken this time the way it usually does, and Bucky can hear them talking about ‘making him comfortable’ and ‘nothing left to do but wait’.

Of course, Buck is having none of it.  This is Stevie they are talking about.  Stevie with the bad back, bad lungs and partial color blindness.  Stevie who had made it to 18 years against all the odds and he wasn’t going to die now.  He couldn’t.

(Bucky couldn’t even think about what would happen if he lost Steve.  Ever since they had met when Steve was just 8 years old he had become Bucky’s whole life.  Bucky would do anything for him, and being helpless in the face of a battle Steve was losing felt like a punch in the gut.)

The doctors sigh and don’t put up a fight when Bucky asks to take him home, slipping a mask over Steve’s weakly coughing mouth with sad eyes.  Their resignation leaves him cold, and he scoops Steve up into his arms.  (Too light. _God_ Steve is too light.)

But they don’t go home.

Steve has always loved the stars, and if Steve really is going to die tonight, his last sight is not going to be the dingy peeling walls of their apartment.  He pays for a trolley to Central Park before carrying Steve up to Summit Rock.  Steve is awake enough to know him, smiling weakly against Bucky’s neck.  No one is there, and Bucky can’t help but smile.  He lays out the blanket he snagged from the hospital, settling on a bench before settling Steve in his lap and smoothing the blanket over Steve’s thin frame.

“Must be bad if you busted me out,” Steve murmured after a moment.  Bucky doesn’t say anything.  He can’t tell Steve that he brought him up here to his favorite place in the city to die.

“It’s okay Buck.  It was only a matter of time.”

“You’re not going to die.”  Steve laughs softly, the sound turning into an aborted choke as he coughs.  Bucky helped him sit up a little to ease his breathing.  Eventually the fit passes, but Steve is even more ashen and pale.  Closing his eyes, he falls asleep.  Bucky doesn’t care that his arm is falling asleep.

The sunset is beautiful, but it’s not romantic, not with Steve’s fever spiking and his breath rattling in his chest.  Steve wakes a few hours later, just as the first stars begin twinkling in the twilight sky.

“Thank you,” Steve murmurs.  Bucky thinks he’s still asleep, dreaming because of the fever, but then he feels Steve’s hand tighten on his and notices the moonlight dancing in Steve’s blue eyes.

“Don’t mention it.”

“I’m dying,” Steve says softly.  “And you gave me this.  You know how much I hate hospitals, how much I’ve always feared dying in one, and you made sure it didn’t happen.”  It’s the most lucid Steve has been in days, and it breaks Bucky’s heart.

“Course, punk.”  Bucky is sure he’s about to cry, voice thick and wobbling.  Steve raises his hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to Bucky’s knuckles.

“Look!” Steve says suddenly, pointing up to the sky.  Bucky doesn’t see anything at first, but then he sees the flash of a shooting star.

“Make a wish.”

Bucky thinks about that night when he’s walking back from the HYDRA base with the brand new Steve Rogers by his side.  Steve who walks without a limp, breathes all the way to his belly and has grown a foot and a half and 100 pounds of pure muscle.

He had wished for Steve to have a new body, a better one.  And here Steve is, strong and healthy and whole and impossible.  Bucky can’t stop looking at him, sure he’s going to dissolve under his touch and turn into mist or thin air.  But there’s that same lopsided grin, the same tilt of his shoulders that used to be about making him look small though it’s impossible now that he towers over everyone else in line.

And when they settle down for the night, Steve pressed warmly against his side, Bucky stares up into the star speckled sky, looking for one more shooting star.

The star that will get them both home.

 


End file.
